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View Full Version : Something that I've noticed about my narrative style (gender and appearance specific)



Jon_Dahl
2016-02-14, 04:31 PM
When I run games, I usually try to focus on how I tell the story and I try to observe myself. Recently I've noticed that I can describe women as beautiful, but I never describe men as beautiful or handsome.

I almost always play in exclusively male groups. However, when I have played with women, they have found some of my male NPCs attractive, but not because I have specifically pointed out that they are handsome. The female gamers have somehow perceived the male NPCs handsome for other reasons which are not obvious to me, or maybe the attraction hasn't been based on appearance at all. I don't know.

Is it bad that I might describe female NPCs "beautiful", but male NPCs are never "handsome"?

If it's of any relevance, I'm a heterosexual male.

Lvl 2 Expert
2016-02-14, 04:56 PM
I wouldn't say it's bad perse, but it is an opportunity you can use. Try it on sometime. The king can totally look like Sean Connery, which sets him apart from that other fair and just king of medium muscled build with two sons and a black horse. The blacksmits son can strike people immediately as handsome, maybe even stunningly so. And his brother is even prettier, with the smooth skin of a prince who grew up in a world of luxury and glamour. And of course when there are handsome blokes it becomes more of a defining characteristic for other people when they are ugly. The huge squarely build rebel captain with the unhinged jaw, the drooping eyelid, the elephant like ears and the impressive collection of facial scars stands out even more if his latest batch of recruits is a bunch of pretty boys.

Even if you in your daily life don't pay a lot of attention to how good looking men are, others do, and they'll be more immersed if your world includes that aspect. And looking at men doesn't have to be connected to liking guys or vice versa. Even when your table are all the straightest of straight dudes, you can bet that fitness buff checks out the arms on people he meets, that actor sizes people up according to how much they look like a movie star and that guy with the stylish jacket inspects dudes' wardrobes.

As a comparison: I don't smell that well (as in my nose doesn't, not as in my feet don't, although that's also kind of true...), but I can still try to include the smell of roses, or ****, or formaldehyde or burned corpse or leaving the gas on in descriptions in games. It works for the audience.

BWR
2016-02-14, 05:42 PM
I have described men as, apart from varying degrees of ugly though average: ruggedly handsome, fierce but attractive, coarse but strangely appealing, good-looking, looks nice, handsome, pretty, pretty boy, gorgeous, beautiful, stunningly good-looking and other variants.
I think my comments on male attractiveness aren't much fewer than ones about female attractiveness. I think playing with my girlfriend all these years made me think about adding such descriptions more than I would have if I played with nothing but straight guys. For both men and women, default attractiveness level is 'average'.

As for why people assume attractiveness when no indicator has been given: I tend to do that when female NPCs are introduced. I think it's just one of those assumptions about wanting something and tending to see it given minimal stimulus.

Bohandas
2016-02-14, 06:53 PM
EDIT: Wromg thread

Malimar
2016-02-14, 07:47 PM
If you do conclude that this habit is bad and you wish to break it (which, well, it probably is and you probably should), here's how I do it:

I mostly play D&D3.5 (with a bit of Pathfinder and 5e). I'm probably gonna get dogpiled for treating charisma as attractiveness when the rules say attractiveness is only one of many components of charisma, but... I treat charisma as attractiveness, because it's simple and easy. It's an easy indicator of how attractive a character is, so if their charisma warrants it, I'll mention whether or not men are handsome or women are beautiful. Doesn't so much help for NPCs that I haven't statted out, but in that case I default them to "average" regardless of gender.

That said, I might still have an unconscious bias where I tend to give female NPCs more charisma than male ones, but at least the bias is at one remove from the players instead of being right there in front of them.

goto124
2016-02-14, 07:52 PM
so if their charisma warrants it, I'll mention whether or not men are handsome or women are beautiful

1) Is NPC's Charisma greater than 9?
If no, ignore.
If yes, go to 2.

2) Is NPC male or female?
If male, describe as handsome.
If female, describe as beautiful.

Seems simple enough (http://i.imgur.com/Cj0XsdL.png) :smalltongue:

Darth Ultron
2016-02-14, 08:55 PM
Your normal.

It is typical to describe women in great physical amounts detailing her beauty , but to describe a guy as ''looking like a guy'' and detailing his clothing/equipment .

The vast majority of women are attracted to things other then pure looks.

kraftcheese
2016-02-14, 09:23 PM
When I run games, I usually try to focus on how I tell the story and I try to observe myself. Recently I've noticed that I can describe women as beautiful, but I never describe men as beautiful or handsome.

I almost always play in exclusively male groups. However, when I have played with women, they have found some of my male NPCs attractive, but not because I have specifically pointed out that they are handsome. The female gamers have somehow perceived the male NPCs handsome for other reasons which are not obvious to me, or maybe the attraction hasn't been based on appearance at all. I don't know.

Is it bad that I might describe female NPCs "beautiful", but male NPCs are never "handsome"?

If it's of any relevance, I'm a heterosexual male.

It's not *bad* per se, its probably a combo of several factors:

-In media, old stories, etc theres a much bigger focus on describing the beauty of women than that of men, influence of that

-Considering you're not sexually attracted to men and ARE sexually attracted to women it makes sense that you'd default to what you know; describing attractiveness in women, rather than describing attractiveness in men, something you probably don't notice as much.

-There's a heap of societal pressure (in my experience) to not "seem gay" as a guy, so you end up consciously or subconsciously omitting completely normal things from your way of thinking of and describing other men in terms of attractiveness

I personally think it makes for a more interesting game with a varying cast of characters that stand out, regardless of gender; and I guess making them hot is one way to do it?

If you wanna improve on it I suppose all you have to do is notice people, in real life, on TV, in film, etc who are considered attractive, look at the qualities they have, and eventually you'll have a kinda baseline idea of an attractive man.

Forderz
2016-02-15, 10:18 AM
Of course you, being hetero, are going to care more about how a lady looks compared to a dude. That's part of the biological imperative.

I don't think it's a problem, especially if your table is also hetero dudes. Feel out how new arrivals interpret your descriptions and roll from there.

LibraryOgre
2016-02-15, 03:50 PM
Is it bad that I might describe female NPCs "beautiful", but male NPCs are never "handsome"?

If it's of any relevance, I'm a heterosexual male.

Not bad, just a thing you've noticed you do. We tend to rate women a lot more on looks, so it gets included in our descriptions. Men tend to get rated more on actions, professions, and the like, and so those become part of their description, rather than appearance.

Try tossing a d10 for everyone's appearance, if it's not important to the story, using the standard and highly subjective 1-10 scale of appearance (you might want 2d6-2, giving you a 0 to 10 scale with a bit of a bell on it). You'll run into the occasional handsome person, the occasional ugly person, and a good number of adequate people who go on by.

wobner
2016-02-15, 04:31 PM
If i understand the question correctly, my two cents

words like pretty, handsome and beautiful are largely meaningless. "She has pretty eyes", "she has a beautiful smile", why? what about it is pretty or beautiful. all you are saying is "i like her eyes" or "i like her smile", or in the context of the game "the player should find this character attractive". If you are giving good, detailed descriptions about your characters, and simply leaving off this useless quantifier, then that is why your female players found your male characters attractive, because even if you didn't spell it out for them that they should like these features, even if you didn't think them so yourself, the features were there.

One exercise you might consider though, your best bet i think, would be to ask these female players to describe those male characters back to you as they envisioned them, so you can see what they see. You might also want to try refraining from using such words as pretty and beautiful when describing your female characters and see if their descriptions suffer, see how they compare to their male counterparts, which may possibly help you rework your descriptions of males. It might also help to think of it in the context that you are not saying "this man is handsome", but saying, "the players should find this character attractive" or "the players should find this feature appealing" Then it matters less if you can appreciate it, or even understand it, yourself.

That said, I will confess it bothers me quite a bit that i don't see men as handsome. I am a heterosexual male, its not that i expect to be attracted to men, but i consider it a severe short coming that i seem incapable of appreciating, even reckognizing, attractiveness in men. Watching a group of female friends compliment eachother, while it may not be socially acceptable for males to do the same in most situations, does stress the point that i just don't see it anyway. If thats your question, as i understand it to be, while i don't think its "wrong", i find it very troubling and unfortunate for myself personally. Right or wrong though, asking the question in the first place seems a good thing.

If you are talking about describing female characters more in regards to their looks, and men not so much, thats a different question, but not the one i think you are asking.

goto124
2016-02-15, 09:03 PM
I was DMing a solo game when the PC walked into a night club. My DM notes stated the night club had characters of all sexes, genders and sexual orientation. Knowing that the PC's player was still quite uncomfortable with male homosexuality, I decided not to describe the male NPCs in the night club as much as I described the female NPCs. I suppose those men had Detect Orientation on, realized the PC was straight, and said "let's not bother him" :smalltongue:

@wobner: Good point... is OP stating the female characters are 'pretty' or 'beautiful', (un)intentionally leaving out accurate description, to give a blank state where the players fill in their own idea of beauty?

Or is OP describing them in a manner he feels to be 'beautiful'? Just as an example, saying "she has long eyelashes, pouty lips and wide hips"?

----

I'm an androsexual female (with questionable gynosexuality, not that it's relevant for now). Even I have no idea what makes me find male characters sexually attractive. It seems to be triggered by the smallest and most inane of things such as shirtlessness, flirty actions towards another female*, or the mere suggestion of sexuality. Sometimes, simply having well-written description to read (the description doesn't even have to describe the character as attractive, maybe because I tend to assume characters are good-looking already) is enough to set shipping off.

I'll say: Don't try to make players feel attracted towards a character. Not likely to work, and the character tends to come off insufferable instead. If beauty or attractiveness is an important plot point, have other NPCs react to that character as such. "As Lord Handsome walked past the crowd, giggles of the ladies started to fill up the street as women waggle their trimmed eyebrows. Reimfred, you notice a few embarrassed men with beet red faces." And yes, feel free to outright use the words 'beautiful' or 'handsome'.

Wait till you say "An impossibly beautiful lady rises out of the water. Make a Will save" :smallamused:

* I have only seen one male PC act flirty towards another male character, and that male PC was a lizardfolk. My preferences don't cover non-mammals.